{"id":4683,"date":"2018-09-11T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4683"},"modified":"2018-09-09T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T23:45:44","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/09\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld II&#8217;: Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first chapter of <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, Rincewind discovers his life is about to stop being dull. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I can definitely say this: I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting into. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the point of the Shakespeare references in the epigraph, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m suspecting that the title\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<i>The Globe<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmust refer to both the globe in Rincewind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office and the famed theater in London. Right? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But this is par for the course: since no one can spoil me, that means I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what the hell I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting, and this first chapter barely gives me anything to go on. Knowing that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the <i>Science<\/i> books isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t helpful either because I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell what the science is going to be about! Winter? Elves? One of the seven positions that Rincewind has? The most tree-like tree of all time? I am at the mercy of this book, so let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with the wizards, who are actually having <i>fun<\/i> in this first chapter. Later, we learn that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort of the point, which still feels so surprising to me. Have we <i>ever<\/i> seen the wizards just have fun in such a pure way? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re basically playing a magical version of paintball. There was a very brief time in my life in high school when I got into paintballing. It ended up being too expensive of a hobby to maintain, but I got sucked in when a friend let me use their gun.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I also imagine that the wizard version of this hurts a whole lot less.<\/p>\n<p>This teamwork-building exercise, unsurprisingly, goes awry. Actually, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not quite right. It <i>has<\/i> been going awry because the wizards cannot fathom the idea of being on a team WITH OTHER WIZARDS:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d start out as two teams, but as soon as there was any engagement they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get all excited and twitchy and shoot other wizards indiscriminately. If you were a wizard then, deep down, you knew that every other wizard was your enemy.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, this is such a huge contrast to the witches, and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop thinking about it because I just came off of a book full of them. Like, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly some friendly and passive-aggressive competitiveness to the witches, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing like <i>this<\/i>. Still, a magic paintball free-for-all sounds like a lot of fun, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect any of these wizards to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153build a dynamic team ethos.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nice try, Ridcully?<\/p>\n<p>So, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discuss the Roundworld. I dug the fact that this book basically picked up in the wake of the last one, and the world that the wizards constructed before immediately plays into the story here. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what kind of magic got the wizards sent into Roundworld, and I was definitely not prepared for ELVES to return to a <i>Discworld<\/i> book. Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s elves are fucking <i>terrifying<\/i>, and now they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve invaded the Roundworld. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell if Ridcully meant that the wizards were useless because&#8230; well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s these wizards. They usually are. But what if their magic doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work in the Roundworld either? That would not make it good for the wizards, but hopefully, the Librarian has a theory that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve Hex\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s problem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>+++I cannot guarantee reacquiring more than one of every organ.+++<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s&#8230; bad. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that, Hex.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/x8SA1x9XUFs<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first chapter of The Science of Discworld II, Rincewind discovers his life is about to stop being dull. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,552],"class_list":["post-4683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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